Kristin Samuelian
Kristin Samuelian
Associate Chair
Professor
Literature: British literature and culture of the long nineteenth century, nineteenth-century British novel, materialist approaches to literature.
Kristin Samuelian received her PhD from Boston University. She teaches courses in nineteenth-century British literature and culture, the nineteenth-century novel, and research methods. She is the author of Royal Romances: Sex, Scandal, and Monarchy in Print, 1780-1821 (Palgrave, 2010) and The Moving Body and the English Romantic Imaginary (Routledge, 2021). She has published essays in Studies in Romanticism, ELH, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, and in several anthologies of essays on nineteenth-century and Romantic-era literature and culture. She is editor of the Broadview Literary Texts edition of Jane Austen's Emma (Broadview, 2004; revised edition forthcoming).
Current Research
My research focuses on representations of the body in a variety of discourses in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British culture—including fiction, medical discourse, graphic satire, print, and theatrical culture. My second book, The Moving Body and the English Romantic Imaginary, explored questions of national identity, gender, and class in British popular writing about dance, dancing, and dancers, from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. My current book project, titled “Living Wonders: Culture, Politics, and the Scrutinized Body in Romantic and Victorian Fictions,” explores how trauma registers on the body as represented in fiction, in public amusements, and in legal, medical, and quasi-scientific discourse from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. This book is forthcoming from The Ohio State University Press in 2027.
Selected Publications
Monographs and editions:
The Moving Body and the English Romantic Imaginary. Routledge, 2021. Routledge Studies in Romanticism Series.
Royal Romances: Sex, Scandal, and Monarchy in Print, 1780-1821. Palgrave MacMillan, 2010.
Emma, by Jane Austen. Edited with an introduction, explanatory notes, and selected contemporary documents. Broadview Press, 2004, 2022 (forthcoming). A Broadview Literary Texts edition.
Selected articles:
"Bodies in play: boxing, dance, and the science of recreation” (coauthored with Mark Schoenfield, Vanderbilt University). Playing Games in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America. Eds. Ann R. Hawkins, Erin Bistline, and Maura Ives. SUNY Press (forthcoming, 2021).
“Looking at the Case against Her: Intertextuality in Queen Caroline Prints.” The Green Bag (Spring 2021).
“The Politics of Extraction: Blackwood’s and The Imperial.” Romantic Periodicals in the Twenty-first Century: 12 Case Studies from Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Eds. Nicholas Mason and Tom Mole. Edinburgh UP, October 2020. Edinburgh Critical Studies in Romanticism Series.
“Nationalism, restoration, and Romantic ballet: Thackeray, Taglioni, and the good old (English) plan.” Nineteenth-Century Contexts 41.5 (November 2019).
"Dancing in Time and Place: Figuring Englishness in Romantic Periodicals." ELH 83:3 (Fall 2016).
“Periodicals” (coauthored with Mark Schoenfield, Vanderbilt University). Handbook to Romanticism Studies. Ed Joel Faflak and Julia M. Wright. Oxford: Blackwell Press, 2012.
“Managing Propriety for the Regency: Jane Austen Reads the Book.” Studies in Romanticism (Summer 2009).
Courses Taught
ENGH 301, The Fields of English
ENGH 305, Dimensions of Writing and Literature
ENGH 333, British Novel of the Eighteenth Century
ENGH 336, British Novel of the Nineteenth Century
ENGH 432, Major British Authors
ENGH 458, Topics in Literary Research (RS)
ENGH 642, Seminar in British Literature
ENGH 500, Research in English Studies
HNRS 110, Research Methods
HNRS 122, Reading the Arts
HNRS 130, Identity, Community, Difference
ENGH 202, Texts and Contexts
Recent Presentations
Conference presentations:
“Anomalous Bodies, Composite Creatures, and Quasi-Humanity in Victorian Public Amusements: The Living Skeleton and Other Novelties.” Center for Humanities Research Annual Symposium: Humanity and Its Others, George Mason University, April 24, 2025.
“Fused, Broken, and Disappearing Bodies: Disability, Spectacle, and Empire.” Nineteenth-Century Studies Association (NCSA) Conference, New Orleans, LA, March 2025.
“Hunger striking: the politics of distress in Godwin and Brontë.” North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR) Conference, Georgetown, DC, August 2024.
“Border Crossing: Jane Eyre, Hunger, and Irish Law.” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Association (INCS) Conference, Cincinnati, OH, March 2024.
“Spectacular Disability: Cataloguing Disorder in Emma.” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Association (INCS) Conference, Knoxville, TN, April 2023.
“Narratives of Demolition: Trauma and Wasting in The Adventures of Caleb Williams.” North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR) Conference, Liverpool, August 2022.
“Waste: Disordered Eating, Anxiety, and Recovery in Great Expectations.” Northeast Victorian Studies Association (NVSA) Conference, Baltimore, MD, April 2022.
Invited lectures:
“Dirty Dancing in the Romantic Period: The Lessons of History for Research in English Studies.” Center for Humanities Research Workshop: “What is Humanities Research?” March 2021.
“Engaging Ambiguity: Allusion and Intertext in Queen Caroline Prints.” Conference on “Trial by Media: The Queen Caroline Affair.” Yale Law School, New Haven, CT, October 2019.
“Strange disorders: nationalism and disease in Romantic-era writing about dance” Eighteenth/Nineteenth-Century Colloquium, Warren Humanities Center, Vanderbilt University, January 2013.